Keanu Reeves Went Full Method For John Wick's Sledgehammer Scene
The "John Wick" series is known for subverting action movie tropes. It's part of what has made the Keanu Reeves-led films such a success, with the latest entry, "John Wick: Chapter 4," headshoting a new franchise box office record on its opening weekend. The saga of Baba Yaga has now officially passed the $1 billion mark at the box office, proving that "John Wick" is a bonafide blockbuster franchise.
But while a huge part of the films' success has been upending genre clichés and basically inventing a whole new action subgenre — think "Nobody," "Atomic Blonde," and "Sisu" — sometimes the films just lean into the standard tricks of action movie-making. Case in point: the famous "Baba Yaga" sequence in 2014's "John Wick." The inaugural (and still the best, by the way) entry in the franchise features so many classic John Wick moments, but the scene where Michael Nyqvist's Russian crime lord Viggo Tarasov brings his son, Losef (Alfie Allen), up to date on the legend of John Wick is a standout.
In the famous sequence, Tarasov tells his son how Wick is "the one you send to kill the f***ing boogeyman," while shots of Reeves' assassin using a sledgehammer to unearth his buried weapons are intercut throughout. This is an example of having everyone but the protagonist himself talk about how incredible their skills are — a trick that's been used throughout action movie history to build tension before we, the audience, see the hero demonstrate his or her skills for the first time. In this case, it was also a chance for Reeves to foreshadow what would become his famous commitment to doing his own stunt work throughout the "John Wick" films.
Real sweat
We all know the story of how John Wick wanted to live in solitude after escaping the assassin life and settling down with his wife, only to be pulled back after Losef Tarasov killed the puppy his late wife gifted him. The hitman's quest for revenge has since spanned four films and seen him travel the globe, dispatching untold numbers of foes in what was remarkably, according to franchise director Chad Stahelski, only about seven to eight months.
But before that epic adventure played out, Stahelski and his co-director on the first "John Wick," David Leitch, needed a suitably badass introduction for Keanu Reeves' embattled assassin. Thus, the "Baba Yaga"/sledgehammer sequence was conceived, establishing Wick as a truly nightmarish presence in the criminal underworld. In the director's commentary for the film, Stahelski and Leitch recalled how a shot showing Reeves holding his sledgehammer was one of their favorites, with Leitch remarking, "Classic horror movie shot. Substitute sledgehammer for axe."
The director duo went on to reveal that the basement where Wick puts his sledgehammer to use was one of the few sets they actually had built, with most of the film being shot in and around Manhattan and Brooklyn. They also provided some insight into the gear they used, revealing that Hawk anamorphic lenses were used to give the basement shots some horizontal anamorphic lens flares, with Stahelski commenting, "Yeah, it looks so pretty. Without getting too J.J. Abrams."
But the best tidbit comes when Stahelski and Leitch reveal that Reeves was in full method mode for this scene, with the former saying, "Keanu's actually using a real sledgehammer there. He didn't like using the fake rubber one, so he beat the crap out of this set with a real sledgehammer, and that's real sweat."
Reeves went method from day one
Keanu Reeves has a reputation for doing his own stunts, but with "John Wick," that proclivity for putting himself in harm's way is integral to the film's success. Chad Stahelski has talked about how using long takes wasn't just a way to save money and differentiate the series' gun-fu combat from other actioners but allowed for a heightened sense of realism as audiences had a chance to see that it really was Reeves performing all the action himself. Which, considering the intensity of this franchise's fight scenes, is that much more impressive. No wonder a VFX supervisor for "John Wick: Chapter 4" thought Reeves was literally going to die on-set.
But there's more to it than the "Matrix" star just being really good at doing his own stunts. With "John Wick," the actor was at a nadir in his career, coming off the massive bomb that was "47 Ronin," and saw "John Wick" as more than just an action hero that he could use to get his career back on track. In his words, Reeves wanted to play a "full-blooded" character, and saw Wick as a role he could really commit to. Which is why his use of a real sledgehammer is a little more than a fun piece of trivia — it speaks to how seriously the actor took this role and kicks off the franchise with a perfect embodiment of Reeves' commitment that would become so important to the series' success.